Brittany Courville has had an interesting career path. The University of Pennsylvania Law grad began her legal career at Winston & Strawn but has since left the practice of law. Courville got caught up in the Free Britney movement — the online activism that agitated for the end of pop star Britney Spears’s conservatorship. And when that passion butted up against her legal work, she dipped out of life as an attorney to try her hand as an influencer.
As she’s said on her platform, “Let’s just say my law tube career and my legal career collided almost immediately, and I chose to leave my first lawyer job after Britney Spears’ manager personally requested I stopped making investigation videos about her on YouTube. And I refused. So I quit, and that sucked. That sucked,” she said. “I’m retiring from the practice of law. Moving forward, I will seek to make more decisions that allow me to experience true freedom.”
With 163,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, Courville continues to speak about celebrity conservatorships. Yes, Britney is, in fact free now, but a frequent subject of Courville’s content is Lima Jevremovic, who served one year as a court-appointed guardian of Bam Margera, of MTV’s Jackass fame.
As reported by Law.com:
In her discussion of the Margera case, Courville has alleged that Jevremovic has conspired with Margera’s family and friends to gain control of his assets, according to a 2022 suit by Jevremovic. Courville has also suggested Jevremovic was criminally liable in connection with the treatment she provided to a former homeless woman, Amanda Rabb, who died in 2021, the suit claimed. Jevremovic’s suit claims she and her family have had to move multiple times due to death threats from Courville’s followers.
Which, has led to some legal issues. Jevremovic filed a lawsuit against Courville alleging the former attorney “created a scandal concocting ersatz villains out of Ms. Jevremović and her wellness supplements and healthcare solutions software business, AURA.”
But in a series of related cases, U.S. District Judge Zahid Quaraishi dismissed them without prejudice, relying on Sciore v. Phung, holding that “Internet forums … conveys a strong signal to a reasonable reader that the statements are defendant’s opinion” and are given “less credence” than “similar remarks made in other contexts.”
And Corville’s attire played a role in his thinking:
The judge noted that Courville, when speaking on her videos, “can be seen wearing either panda ears or bunny ears while making her statements, while a sparkly unicorn piñata rests prominently in the background.”
In addition, Courville calls herself a “legal edutainer,” and refers to her opinions about Margera and Jeremovic as mere “theories,” the judge said.
Jevremovic is currently on the fourth amended complaint, and the pleadings on Corville’s motion to dismiss are ongoing. But Jeremovic is determined to chart out how defamation works online:
Boiling down the defamatory statements against Jeremovic is difficult because Corville made “hour after hour” of claims, “except to say that Ms. Jeremovic is the devil incarnate, trying to steal money and take advantage of people with addiction problems,” said [Jeremovic’s attorney Elliot Ostrove,] of Epstein Ostrove in Edison, New Jersey.
“She’s trying to be a social media personality and internet star, basically trying to make a living by riling up other people, and it seems to work to some degree,” Ostrove said. “Defamation laws need to exist online. Just because somebody’s puts themselves online and uses their finger quotes or uses silly backgrounds or pretend like they’re saying, ‘well, it’s just my opinion,’ they can’t then spew falsehoods that … actually harm people, and hide behind the fact that they’re doing it on the Internet. If they’re going to put information out there, and they’re going to put it out there in a way to try to rile people up, they need to make sure what they’re saying is true and accurate.”
Because if you can’t trust a washed-out Biglaw attorney in bunny ears, who can you trust?
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
